Hypertext fiction: The latest in postmodern literary theory

STUDENTS ON CAMPUSES ACROSS the country are plugging into hypertext fiction, the new genre many English professors are calling the latest in postmodern literary theory. Classes such as "Cyberculture" and "Technology and the Text" have cropped up on at least fifty campuses, a clear demonstration, proponents say, that the genre is more than a passing fad. But what exactly is hypertext fiction? And how does it work?

Students find most of their hypertext assignments on computer disks or on the World Wide Web. While reading stories on a computer screen, students click on highlighted keywords, passages, or images that will take the narrative in different directions-pathways the students choose according to their own interests. For example, a story might begin with a dinner party. After reading a few paragraphs, one student might click on an image of the hostess, which will lead into a narrative on her childhood. Another student might click on a highlighted keyword, such as "corkscrew" or "ice pick," that leads into a description of an event that took place before the party. A third student could continue reading screen after screen in sequence.

"Hypertext fiction is a nonlinear form of computer-based storytelling that can merge text and image and that allows the reader-viewer to make selections about the story's direction," says David Paddy, a professor of English at Whittier College in California who uses hypertext fiction in his course on the postmodern novel. "Thus, while the author has laid out numerous textual pages and predetermined a series of paths that the reader can follow, the reader can change the nature of the story, depending on which direction he or she takes at the fork in the road. In this way, the reader becomes a near equal partner iii the creative process."

Paddy tries to pair hypertexts with literary equivalents such as Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars, which is arranged like a dictionary and allows readers to choose the narrative direction. Paddy finds hypertext similar to the "shuffle text" popularized in the 1960s. With shuffle text, the reader opened a box that contained a pile of loose-leaf texts and images that could be shuffled and read in random order. "The thing that is obviously unique about hypertext is the technological component," he says. "But, ideally, we should try to view hypertext fiction not as written fiction that happens to be on a computer, but as a unique genre wholly shaped by its technological context."